Add New User with Password
 

Hey,

This may be a dumb question but when I create a new user with:

adduser -p xxx foo

when I try to login the account it doesn't work. In order for it to work I have to do:

passwd foo

and put the password in that way. Then I can login no problem.

So my question is, what does the -p switch do?

So, I take it that it wants you to pass the hashed password, not the plaintext version. See man 5 passwd, man 5 shadow, and man 3 crypt.